Did you know that on Unix type operating systems the ability to create PDF's is built in? Yes, even a PS2 running Linux can make PDF's with a standard base install.
Now usually, you'll be running some kind of graphical application that will often have a button or other menu item for it. But what if they don't?
That's when you'll install cups-pdf:
yum install cups-pdf
You know how on windows you can download some programs that install a virtual printer that will let you print to make PDF's? Well cups-pdf works the similarly, but better. Then you can:
system-config-printer as root to install the fake printer which will then show up in the print menus of your applications. When you use it, it'll print the pdf to your Desktop direcotry in your home directory.
But....you don't even need to do that, though installing cups-pdf makes it easier. You see, most Linux applications print-to-file option outputs postscript, and postscript is easily converted to PDF using the built in utility ps2pdf. You'll hit print-to-file in your app, save the file and then run ps2pdf on it in a terminal.
Now suppose you had a plain ascii text file you wanted to make a PDF out of. You could load it into abiword or OpenOffice and use them to make a PDF, but what fun is that when you could do it in a terminal faster. a2ps converts ascii files (and others) to postscript, then you can use ps2pdf to make the PDF.
Or you can even use lpr in the terminal to print directly to cups-pdf:
lpr -PCups-PDF file
Isn't Linux fun?
Ron Rogers Jr. (CronoCloud)